“I’m so sorry,” he said, tears filling his eyes in the firelight.
I spoke, and as I did, I choked up too. “I know. I know you’re sorry. I believe you. You don’t have to keep saying it.” I was a little frustrated.
“I know; I’m sorry.”
Kim slapped her palm to her forehead and we all laughed.
“But seriously,” I said. And then I softly blurted it out. “I love you, Michael.” It was as if a bomb went off. And it was crazy, like both of us knew it but neither of us wanted to be the one to actually say it.
The answer came even softer. “I love you too.”
It was very still in the room, like being in a deep forest right before a storm breaks. There was a buzz in the air, anticipation.
And then Kim popped the balloon. “Okay, you two totally need to kiss now.”
My jaw dropped.
Michael said precisely what I was thinking: “Awkwarrrd.”
I laughed.
“How about a rain check, Mister?”
“Totes,” he said smilingly in Kim’s vernacular. He relaxed for the first time that day.
Kim rolled her eyes before speaking. “Okay, whatever. But I still have questions. Like, Michael, what freaking happened out there?”
He nodded, again looking older than he was. “It’s hard to know where to begin.” He sat back, crossing an ankle over one knee, his fingers interlaced over his stomach. “If you want explanations, I guess I could start at the beginning. My first … assignment.”
He breathed in and out. “Her name was Sally Potts. She was twelve, the youngest by far to change. I was thirteen. It was at a little school in West Texas—a one-room schoolhouse, just like in Little House on the Prairie.”
“Okay, creepy,” Kim said. “We’re not looking for a full-on confession here, dude. So save it. I just want to know how in the world we got here. How did we get here from whatever happened out there on the cliff?”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Michael. I think you’re a good enough guy. You did save her in the end,” she said, looking at me. “Even if it took you long enough. But can you, pretty please, fill me in on what I missed out there?”
“Okay. It’s pretty simple: Stanley killed Airel.”
“I know. I saw that much.” She shivered.
“So did I,” I said.
“Then I killed Stanley,” Michael said. “And that’s when everything went wrong. Really wrong. James—my demon—tried to finish the … the job? No, that’s not the right word.”
“You can say it,” I said. “I was just a job.”
Michael looked like I had stabbed him. “At first. But that changed…” He was beginning to defend himself, but he let his words fade and stared back into the fire.
I looked at him. There was something different about him now. Something good. And bad. It was as if he was under a burden or in a restraint. It made him seem like a man and not a boy.
“Airel, you have completely wrecked me,” he said, his eyes bright and piercing. “I wish … I mean, I never wanted any of this to happen. I found my courage too late to help you. And I was desperate. That’s why I wrote you back to life.”
I was shocked. “Wait. What?”
He just pointed to the mantelpiece, the rough wooden shelf above the fire, the inkwell and quill pen … those old books. Call me crazy or stupid, but it had only just then occurred to me that I was alive and kicking for a definitive reason. I hadn’t put two and two together yet. I was normally really observant, smart as a whip, but somehow this one had come at me from my blind side.
“Michael, what are you talking about?”
“This,” he said, standing. He walked to the shelf slowly, quietly, with reverence. When his finger brushed one of the books, I heard a shout go out and echo back to me from the deepest recesses of my heart and mind: Michael.
He took my Book—I knew it was my Book—and gently delivered it to me.
I opened it and saw what he had done. I saw the three words he had written there:
“But she lived.”
The page was warped from his tears. I was stunned. Shocked. “How could you …” I felt violated. “How could you write in my book?” I didn’t even know I had a book. I thought only full angels had them.
“Airel, I—”
I was overcome. “I can’t believe it,” I stammered. What I meant to say was something along the lines of this: I can’t believe you’re that bold, that amazingly desperate … for me. The bigger picture started to come into focus. I reached for She. But there was nothing there. I felt completely alone. I felt like my childhood was over and, ready or not, I was now an adult. Far from what I had always thought, it wasn’t glorious. It wasn’t liberating. Nope. It scared the crap out of me.
I was beginning to hyperventilate. “Michael.”
He knelt in front of me, naked anxiety on his face. “Breathe.”
I held my Book open on my lap, dumbfounded. “I have a Book.” Everything about my life, if it was bigger than the universe before, was now impossible. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“I’m … sorry?”
Oh, no. He was taking it wrong. So was I. “No. I’m sorry.”
He took my hands inside his own, wrapping them up in warmth and strength.
“I just can’t believe you did that. It was incredibly brave. How did you even know? How did you figure it out? How did you find this, and—how could it have even worked?”
Michael flashed me his trademark smile, the crooked smirk that could melt me in a second. “It wasn’t me. It was El.”
I was really confused. “It was—?”
He nodded. “It was El. I asked Him and He told me. I had a … a conversation with Him. After I found Kim.”
We looked at her.
She gave Michael a look. “You are so weird.”
“All I remember is being tackled … falling off the cliff, splashing into the lake. I saw you.” I looked at him. “I saw you.” It was all coming back in a flood. I couldn’t say that I thought I had lost him too. I wiped my eyes.
“And I remember—I forgave you.” I looked at him, grabbed his face with my hands, and locked my eyes on his. “I still choose that, and you.” I collapsed on his shoulder, weeping, wrestling with my rash words in juxtaposition to my doubtful and damaged heart. But the trouble was that it was all true.
He simply held me. When I finally recovered, Kim was gone. I figured she felt like a third wheel. Or that she had gotten the answers she wanted, at least in part.
Michael and I rested against each other, our heads touching. I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek, smell the rugged clean sweetness of his scent. It was Abercrombie Fierce. Oh. “Oh.” Memories, impossible ones, came back to me. I caught my breath, my heart in a frenzy beneath the scar on my chest. I pulled back from him; it felt dangerous.
Hey, speaking of wounds. “Why didn’t I heal completely? Why the scar?” I asked no one. There was no answer. “And how did you heal?” I looked up at him from my Book. “Can you heal too?”
He looked straight into my eyes, and I saw how deep the pain in him went. I couldn’t see the end of it. “Something like that.” He stood and walked back to the fire. He leaned against the mantelpiece, half turned back toward me. “I guess Kim took off, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He nodded.
I could tell the conversation had moved on, but I didn’t know how he felt about that. I didn’t even really know how I felt about it. I wished I could hear what he was thinking. “So … Stanley is dead. James is dead … Or something. And Kreios is gone.”
“I don’t know—I guess so. I haven’t seen him since … since I was carrying you back. He looked really, really pissed.”
I wasn’t getting it, but I could tell he was trying to tell me something.
“I’m pretty sure he still thinks you’re dead.”
I didn’t get it at first, but then it hit me like a city bus.
The implications were enormous. What would a five-thousand-year-old supernaturally powerful angel be doing if he had just lost his granddaughter to … yeah … this is not good.
***
IN THE SPIRITUAL DARK that surrounded the Master, three iniquitous shapes cowered, bent under the burden of his countenance. There was no exchange. No information changed hands on the air. When orders were given, they were understood and that was all. Everything was disconnected.
There were more like them, these three, but they were an ancient kind and rarely beheld. In the earliest days under the sun, when the Master—the great Leader—had procured the Dominion, these three had a different appearance. They were once tall, strong, robust, even beautiful. Now they, as well as all the others of their kind, were shriveled, encrusted with a growth of filth and fungus. Open pustules spewed forth clouds of black spores from their once-beautiful skin, now threatening contagion wherever they went. Milky pus glided across the deep crevices of their hides, and they moved as if they were diseased, as if they were puppets on strings, jerking and spastic and shaky.
But they were fast. Dangerous. Deceptive. And as they stood before the Master, the Leader, they understood what mission he had conceived for them. As always, there would be at least two objectives: one that was disclosed, in a fashion, and another that the Leader kept to himself. In a kingdom populated by usurpers, command was executed ruthlessly, because it was true that a kingdom divided against itself could not stand. None dared to contradict what was understood in this room—the seat of all deception, the anti-throne of Self.
The room was a clean space. Pure white. But it was all mockery; it was empty and plunged at all times in deepest hollow blackness. For that was the essence of clean—blankness. Up was down, right was wrong. And hatred was righteousness.
The three now stood taller, having imbibed the desires of the Leader. They knew. The thought-language was pre-Babylonic, very clean, direct. In one unarticulated thought they understood numberless ideas about the girl, the Immortal, the one who had wielded the Sword, and the one who had betrayed the Seer. They understood death. And how to use it.
They were gone.
CHAPTER VII
MICHAEL FOUND KIM ALONE near sunrise in the massive ballroom. She was looking out of the ornate windows under the waterfall. The moon hung in the sky obscured by haze, giving it a halo. Angels were on his mind.
“Kim,” he called out from a good distance away. Still, she jumped—even though he had tried to give her fair warning. “Sorry.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Sorry.”
She rolled her eyes.
“How are you? Bruises healing up all right?” he asked.
“Yeah. I guess so. And look who’s Mr. Dad all of a sudden.”
Michael considered asking himself what he did to deserve this. And then he thought better of it. “You look like you’re deep in thought.”
“Yeah. Go figure. The ditz has a brain.”
“We missed you earlier. In the library.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Okay.” He actually blushed.
It was quiet for a moment, and Michael looked out the window to the valley below. It was beautiful. The grasses were black, but the mind made them green somehow, a mixing of nerve impulses and memory, a sense of what was right and orderly in the world.
“I grew up being taught that the Sons of God were to be banished from the earth,” he said. “El gave the earth to the Brotherhood, not the Sons of God. The reason was never important. It was just how it worked.”
“Where’d you find that verse? First Book of Crap, chapter one? Hello, Michael—God didn’t give the earth to anyone but mankind. Then Adam and Eve chose to give it away in the Garden, and all of us got to inherit that. It’s Sunday School 101, dude.”
He couldn’t help but be shocked. “Wow, Kim.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, turning back to the scene below. “You weren’t expecting me to be smart, right?”
“Kim. Is it just an act?”
“Don’t start on me, dude. I am who I have to be in order to fit in. But I have a brain. I can figure things out.” She looked down, regret written on her face. “I just can’t believe I never figured you and James out.” She took a breath. “Airel is more delicate than you know. You need to be careful with her. She overthinks everything. I know her. I know her a lot better than you do.”
“Okay, truce.” He held up his hands.
She smirked. “So. Be careful with my friend, dude.” Her eyes took on a sparkle. “And try not to get her killed again, okay?”
Michael shook his head. “Only if everyone will stop cracking death jokes.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
“All right, Mr. Recovering Satan-oholic. If that’s what you call yourself. Tell me more about where we’re at and where we’re going. I’ll get behind you if you have a good enough plan. Otherwise I’m taking Airel out of here whenever she wakes up, and we’re going back to her parents. End of story.”
“All right, what do you want to know?”
“You can start by explaining to me just how everything freaking worked, dude. Why Airel? Why James? Why all this death and crap? If the devil’s in the details, then show me the cards he’s trying to play.”
He sighed. “Okay. My bloodline is connected to the Bloodstone; all of it interacts with them—with her kind. It activates them, makes them change into immortals, but only in their teen years. During adolescence. Otherwise, we miss our chance. And it’s weird, because the Brotherhood, which is like—I don’t know, a secret society—is going around activating the Sons of El, helping them find and access their power, which could destroy us. I mean them. But they do that for one reason only—to destroy El’s agents on earth. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“The Brotherhood exists to hunt them down and kill them, period. When they think they’ve found one, they send out pairs, like investigative teams. I was a team with James, who was an Infernal. It was my Brother.”
“‘It?’”
“Well, I wouldn’t call a demon a he or a she. It’s a beast. A spiritual manifestation.”
“Oh.”
“Kasdeja,” he said. “That was the Infernal’s actual name.”
She looked at him blankly.
“Stanley was paired with the Seer, and Stanley was his host. He was like a general. Or a commander in chief. It’s complicated. But the Infernals are a little further down the ranks—they’re like captains.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey, you asked.” Michael wanted to apologize again, but he figured he’d been doing enough of that to irritate everyone, including himself. “Anyway, what would happen is, I would drop in, try to get close, and let Stanley’s stone do its work. Once I was sure a change was going on, we would initiate the job.”
Kim had a horrified look on her face.
“I know, but this was normal for me.”
“Normal? These are people, and that is twisted. I mean, you killed people. Really killed them. People.”
“Yes, I did. But to me, back then, they were things. Not people.” This is not going to end well.
“I see,” she said, then became very quiet. She crossed her arms and locked her gaze on the graying view through the window. The sun was beginning to lighten the night sky and a low mist began to creep out over the grasses of the meadow. “So what’s your plan?”
“The plan.” He breathed in and out. “I think we need to find Kreios. And I think we need to get out of here.”
CHAPTER VIII
MICHAEL WALKED ALONE UNDER the rising sun along the path to the little training shack.
He did not choose this life. At, least he didn’t know what he was choosing when he made the choice. It was a choice made in ignorance. Is that fair to say? Everything he had ever been taught was an opposite. True was actually false. Up was actually down. He really d
id believe that the Sons of God needed to be exterminated. Once. But now, everything had changed.
The day he had left Airel here, leaving only a note for her, now haunted his memory.
He remembered what Stanley—his father?—had said to him after he had hitched all the way back, when he had walked in the door of their—home?—in Eagle. “You’re late,” and that was all. No, “Where have you been all this time?” No, “I was worried.” Nothing. Just an accusation that made no sense. At least it made sense until I found out that I had really only been gone for about a day … not weeks. Michael wondered what was so different about this place. What did Kreios build here, and how? Time ran differently—faster, or slower, somehow.
He remembered his training.
We desire the primal. We take the world by force back and back, back to the Chthonic, back to the pre-created darkness of the underworld and the things that spring forth from it. We then shall be Master. Creator. And it shall be a clean nothingness.
If he had one wish now, it was to unsee what he had seen, to undo what he had done. To unhear the voices that still whispered to him out of the folds of his mind.
What had he done to be so viciously thrust into this hell? It was real enough; painfully so. Did he dare reach out to El again? Would God hear him again? El whispered truth and wisdom to him once, but twice was too much to ask for. After all he had done, how could he make atonement for all that?
Where did I go wrong?
It was so simple. All he had done was fall in love with one of the Fallen, one of the Immortals. He messed up, blew his mission, killed the Seer, and loosed the Bloodstone from its vessel—and for that, every horde clan would be tracking him down ruthlessly in a week’s time. Or less.
He groaned.
He touched the scar where Kreios healed him with it—the Bloodstone. He could feel the evil there as it leached into his skin. In the shower earlier, he had seen tiny fingers of red branching out from the center of the new primary wound.
“Just finish her and be done with it. Every Brother is going to be after you for saving her and for killing one of your own.”
“Shut up,” Michael yelled into the air. The sound echoed through the valley and bounced back to him in waves. He sounded to himself like his father. Stanley. Not my father. “Am I … that?”
The Airel Saga Box Set: Young Adult Paranormal Romance Page 35
